The Thunder of Guns, So Sweet In My Head
by The-Music-of-hands
Summary: With iron hearts, they lie, fools lost in lunacy, she can't pull the trigger on the gun...
1. Mirror Image

_**The Thunder of Guns, So Sweet in My Head**_

**_

* * *

_****_Part One: Mirror Image_**

"_She gives him a taste of what he's had all along, and he can't wait to make her bleed."_

* * *

He wonders sometimes, that if the world was different, would he be? He doesn't know. He doesn't give a shit or care to know on a person to person basis either. He enjoys cocking the gun and pulling with the sweet twist of his finger. He takes pleasure in hearing the bullet pound against bone with a thunderous roar followed with the slick crunch of bone and blood spray painted onto the ground below. He smiles at the mess and at the body. He says he loves it when they scream, when they fall to the ground in rumbled clumps of bone and flesh, begging. In a realistic view, he doesn't care.

All in all, he's just trying to forget that he is who his is, and it will never change, at least, for the better anyhow. He wants to erase it.

_Scream for me…_

_Beloved…_

_You are mine…_

_And I am yours…_

It'll disappear eventually, from his mind, from the ground, the crusted crimson staining the cuff of his sleeve. It'll wash off.

He glances carelessly at the women in front of him, her arms twisted; mouth a gaping hole, teeth stained a brackish red. He lets himself laugh for a second, then, checks his watch.

Four to twelve, and at home, she's waiting.

He wipes the smile off his face. Will he wait for her to be there tomorrow morning?

'_I could just get it done with, and then I'll never have to see her leave.'_ He's sick, in fact, too sick with delusional thoughts and stiletto screeching cackles. He wants to kiss her lips as she looks at him without fear.

He wants to hear her say his name.

He wants to stay with her forever.

_He wants to see her burn. _

_He wants to make her scream. _

_He wants her to leave._

He doesn't want to hurt her.

Yet, if she leaves, he'll die. So it's better, if she bleeds.

'_Yes… better, much better if she bleeds…' _

They're standing under the sky, and she's wiping her cheek with an already bloody rag. He's just arrived, and he sees the knives in her pockets, the red layering over her knuckles. The gun in her other hand.

She's wearing an apron. It _was_ yellow. By now, a grotesque piece of splattered artwork. She's smiling.

"Back from work early, neh?"

He nods, slightly perplexed. She walks back inside, mumbling in a cross manner as she flings the apron onto the floor. He steps on it. Sees bits of food and blood, takes his foot off, and blanches. What is she?

In a clatter of noise, she explains, arms clanging already heated pots and pans on the stove just to make noise. He briefly wonders what'll happen if he bashes one on her skull. He takes another hurried glimpse at the gun still held loosely in her hand. He stops thinking about the pans.

Pale blue eyes revert back to her pale skin, now, his imaginary hands butterfly kissing all the way from her neck to her chest, tracing little circles around and around her navel. The clattering of breaking glass breaks his thoughts.

She cackles.

"Damn bastards tried to _kill_ me, Reno. Two of 'em, stupid asses thought I was just a housewife. Didn't think I could break his neck and shoot a gun, eh? Of course, you know me better than that…"

'_no…" _he thinks, idly sauntering over the spattered tiles, just to stop in back of her, hand whispering over the small of her back, _' I had _no_ idea…'_

He grins.

It's better than he expected. He always gets his way…

She leans into his hand, before whipping around, snatching the gun straight from his hand. He can't move now, fingers itching to wrap around her pretty little neck. The hollow barrel of the pistol warms against his sweaty temple, and she screeches another eerie laugh. It's hollow too. Like the gun. Like the whole bullshitting corrupted world.

Like _him_.

"You think I'm stupid? Huh?" She prods the gun against his forehead a little harsher, eyes hard, but shattered like gray slivers of glass.

He wants to swim in them.

He wants to drown in them.

He wants to rip them out and keep them.

'_Hang them on my wall…' _He mentally sneers, while his lips twitch into a sardonic grin.

"Yeah. You're stupid, kid." He laughs, "_So_. _Fucking. Stupid."_

She smiles, loosening her grip on the gun, if only just a bit. "Please, explain. Explain to me why I'm the idiot, when I could blow your fucking brains out with the twitch of my finger. Come on. I _dare_ you."

His stomach ripples with chuckles, he can't stop laughing. Laughing at her, laughing at himself, laughing at the whole goddamned world they live in.

"Kid, you're stupid. Stupid for getting involved with me. Stupid for not killing me right now…" he takes a breath, looking at her eyes, staring…just staring. She shifts uncomfortably, but still keeps the harsh hold of the gun against his head. He frowns. "You're stupid for letting me do _this_."

He lunges, effectively knocking one of the guns from her hand, his face dangerously close to hers. Lips connect.

They fall to the floor.

Her hand is in his hair—the other one still grasping for life to the gun—his lips angled over hers in a fierce ferocity. She laughs again, mockingly, threateningly, before with a single snap of his jaw, he bites down her ear.

She's not laughing anymore. But she _is_ still snatching handfuls of his hair.

He grabs the gun, and is surprised, because she's still staring at him smiling, eyes shiningly wet, and she's not flinching, not at all afraid of the gun pressed into her side.

She knows he won't do it. Just like he knew she couldn't do it to him.

They're the same.

He wonders briefly between kisses, where exactly she'd been all the time.

He doesn't care to know. She won't tell him anyway. All that matters is that they're there. And she's so like him—mirror reflection—he almost wants to pull the trigger.

The gun scrapes against the tiles as he flings it away from them.

He growls deeply in his throat, she feels the rumble of his lips across her neck, tongue edging into the dip of her collarbone, "I can _destroy_ you."

Smirking, she licks her lips.

"Bring it on_._"

* * *

_A/N:_

_Welcome to the more violent side of Reno and Yuffie. It's dark, and, it's real. We all know we love it. Anyway, starting a new series, though this one will be in chapters. I'm tired of using different titles, and I thought a chapter story would be nice. I hope they're not out of character, though when I write, I tend to make them more...like different characters. I should stop writing fiction and changing it into fanfiction. Haha._

_Until next time, _

_Feedback's a babe with Long Red Hair. _

_TMoh._


	2. All For The Sake Of Acting

_**The Thunder of Guns, So Sweet In My Head**_

* * *

**Part Two: All For The Sake of Acting**

* * *

"_She's a liar, lying to the whole world in front of her, and it's the lies that make her deny she's lying."_

* * *

The cutting board is old, and so is the knife, but she doesn't notice, just places onion after acrid onion on the counter, the dull blade hacking away at the layers.

_Thwack…_

It gleams, shines, like a celebrity stiletto, but she doesn't notice it, because her eyes are blurry from the pungent odor of the onion—_damn them_. Furthermore her nose is wrinkled distastefully at the sight of so many diced pieces, which have been cut down to a sort of overpowering onion pulp. '_Delicious, I'm sure…' _her mind mumbles stringently, and she almost growls aggressively as a limp flap layer flops uselessly to the sticky kitchen tiles, among scattered glass shards from the week before.

A brown splotched apron hangs off the single polished brass knob of a top cabinet, but the gun is missing, actually right now tucked loosely into his palm—no worries—depleted of all ammunition.

_Thwack…_

The knife slams against the plastic, sinking into it like a child's toy in play-dough.

_Thwack…_

They're different, sometimes she resent that, but times have changed, and you just have to roll with the punches—even if it means being the lover of the man who killed your best friend. She'd begged him, pleaded, but it was always jobs first, lovers later, a stupid policy they'd come up with on the whim of a drunken night.

One that she regretted…

But, in his defense, she'd been there when he did it, and she hadn't even stopped him. So, it had been proven that she wasn't the friend everyone though she was. (She didn't even cry… the cold hard bitch, no way. She'd screamed, and then after having him slap her silly, she'd come to her senses, said a quick prayer, and they'd skipped out of there like kids in a candy shop.)

_Nothing to it, really sweet heart, nothing to it, Darlin'._

The knife angles, she catches the distorted oval of his lips, the quirk of his eyebrow, and the piercing glow of his eyes glaring back at him from the steel.

_Thwack…_

She loves danger. She's enthralled with death.

Though, when her eyes sting and she bites her tongue, it's hard to remember exactly why-'_fucking, oh God why?'_

_He _ambles in, shuffling expensive shoes and expensive pants across the floor, a cold dark, odorless painless, deathless pistol in the loose grip of his clammy piss poor fingers. He isn't smiling, he isn't frowning, and she doubts that he feels anything at all.

She's conjuring the many uses of a knife. Decides it might sting more when she makes him love her. Decides to wait.

'_Burn…you asshole, burn. You killed me you bastard, you _killed_ me…'_

His voice, low almost musty, thick…emotionless, "Babe, y'know I had to. It's been part of the job description…"

She whispers, damning herself—_always, always, always_—for being so weak, for being so stupid, for hungering for the one thing that hurts her the most. "I know…"

He doesn't put his hand on her shoulder, or kiss her better, hell he doesn't even apologize. They stand there in the gray kitchen light, his shoes crackling against broken glass and her boots clacking against the tiles, sticking and un-sticking with every step she takes. It's her last onion.

_Thwack…_

He continues voice low.

"She didn't feel much pain, I…uh…I made sure, that the bullet went…uh…" He waves his hands, motions never staying still, tangoing in the dampening moisture of the kitchen.

She answers dully, for him, eyes slate and glass, staring down the onion with resent. "The head, I _know_ Reno. I was there. I saw it, saw the blood. Everything…"

"Yeah…," he starts; almost twittering awkwardly like they're not talking about death and they're talking about something total naive and innocent. "Yeah…'guess you did…huh…"

Nothing is pure with them. She's evil, he's fucked, what a _perfect pair… _

She hates him. She wants him. She wants to run away. She needs him to be her shadow…

She's a witch, he's a mage.

She's a demon, he's the devil.

She's the sick twin of Persephone, and he's Hades.

Whether she likes it—though, she chose it, by damn, she did—she wants to stay with him, '_and I want to rip his guts out…'_

She'd always thought herself to be the good guy, the angel. And hello bullets, hello blood, hello him…

Fallen angel, here she comes.

_Thwack…_

_Thwack…_

_Thwack…_

He grabs the knife from her hand, and it's a somber quiet, not at all like the aggressive silence from a week ago, not at all like the adrenaline of shattering glass and loaded guns. No, it's death and detestation, and the malignant tumor that knots their twisted strings together.

"Put the knife down…okay."

She mumbles, barely even trying to fight back, by damn, she's almost so close, so close to giving up. So close to falling off the cliff. Her arms, they're shaking, her nose is wrinkling even more. The onion paste is smeared on the countertops, pasted across the sleek surface of the knife. He puts it into the sink, she rubs her eyes, feels them smart like he's sticking her with a thousand tiny needles. She doesn't care—like she would…it's not like a little bit of acid ever hurt anyone.

"Babe…I _had_ to. You know I did…"

"I know Reno, I fucking know."

'_Gawd, you don't know how much I know…I know, okay? I've got it; it's part of the job. I __**know **__and I understand…"_

She looks at the lonely flap of onion skin lying crumbled half under her shoe, its pale translucent skin showing the brown lines on the tile under it. She contemplates it… contemplates how see through it really is. If she's like that: lucid.

His hand brushes the back of her neck, but then it whips away, darting from the heat of her skin like a snake from flame. He opts for the 'voice' again, low…somber. She doesn't believe it for a second.

"If you know so well, then why in hell are you crying?"

She grabs a handful of white, opal paste, throws it back on the flimsy plastic cutting board. She frowns, she closes her eyes, and she sniffs.

He sees her smile, bitterly, harshly, murderously, her voice, venom.

"Ugh…" she says, mumbling furiously, swiping at her eyes, at her obviously very real tears with her hands slick with clear acid, "Those _damn_ onions…"

_

* * *

_

_A/N:_

_Well, that's out. It's not as aggressive as the first chapter, or first part, but I meant for it to be more contemplative. I've noticed that Yuffie usually gets the last word in my stories…Oddly. _

_Though, not really because I'm a sucker for last words. Trust me. Hopefully this wasn't too far off from the first part. Also, it's not as long, but the next one will be longer, we can all hope..._

_Well, until next time, _

_Feedback's a Blonde Rocket Engineer, _

_TMoh_


	3. The End of the World

_**The Thunder of Guns, So Sweet In My Head**_

* * *

**Part Three: The End of the World, as We've Known It **

* * *

"_It's what's going to end us all…"_

He somehow knew she was going to kill him from the beginning. He can imagine it in his head, the twisted and bloated images whirling like the smoke from a thousand cigarettes. He doesn't really mind either.

If he knows, he doesn't give a damn.

The wind blows. The refrigerator hums. The bed creaks.

And she thinks about how she's going to kill him, under the sparse weight of his sinewy chest.

'_It's only fair,'_ he thinks to himself, as her mouth forms into a breathless oval, '_only fair that one dies for a thousand killed years before…'_

Yet, she wants to die too. (It's not new, in fact, it's rather old.)

Ever since her mother…oh her darling mother. But that was all his friends doing.

Her mother had fallen down like at the end of a dance, arms sweeping out behind her like wings, her mouth not scared, not happy, just there.

The man with black hair, the man with the mark of exile. He'd done it.

He'd died, just like her though. Died by a sword…

Hours later, she thinks to herself as Reno stares out the window, arm splayed across her chest like he actually gives a damn, what if she killed _him_ with a sword?

A long one, spattered with the years of wear and tear, with the memories of dungeons and betrayal, and hero's?

What if she killed him with a rusty old sword? A _hero's_ sword?

She laughs inside her head. What an idea…

'_Ha…_'

She thinks not. Because it'd be instant glorification.

He sits there and tries to read her thoughts, and he almost smiles, because if daylight wasn't so dark, and the memories weren't so sharp as to kill the heart, then they'd both the happiest fucking people on the planet.

If he hadn't killed thousands, and if he hadn't killed her best friends, and goddamn, if he hadn't done all of the shit that he did, then hell, they'd be married and everything would be white. He wouldn't smoke, and his best friend wouldn't have drifted off saying nothing and came back lifeless; still saying nothing at all.

That's how he imagines it if things were better, if things hadn't happened the way they did, and if things came true like they did in every little kid's goddamn dreams.

But things don't.

So he thinks, if he slips her a bit more medication in her tea, and if he pulls the strings just right, she'll die in her sleep, peaceful and dreaming. (Dreaming the things that come true.)

He can't use a gun. He used that on others. He can't do pain.

He doesn't know why either.

_Why can't I hurt you? _

_When I hate you?_

_When I love you so fucking much?_

_Why does it kill me to know it'll be the end of the world;_

_Before I pull the trigger on your sweet beating heart?_

He looks at her, and she's asleep. He presses his lips to her greasy matted hair, lifeless and dull, but still the most radiant thing he's probably ever seen, and he whispers a goodnight.

She lets herself smile.

But both frown, the night only lasts so long, and then they're at it again.

Blood…and curses, and spit…the words and the detestation. (But, they love…but they hate, and it's fucking never-ending from both of their standing points.)

The light switches off, they fall to sleep.

* * *

He dreams of her like she used to be, with big watery eyes, and a feline smirk, deft hands that filched everything from bath soap to hearts. He dreams of her skin, perfectly toned, soft as the oceans breath, and sprinkled with the warmth of cinnamon afternoons. In this dream, his hair is vibrant still, and his swagger is full of life and full of a certain gawky vibrancy. They're holding hands, and they're nowhere and anywhere at all.

Just there in the white, smiling and laughing.

This is what they had been. What they were. What he's wished they could be.

She flounders in the water—there's a puddle in the sky—her arms bobbing up and down in the pool of clear tinted violet water. Her collar bone is sharp, and it's pale, pale, and pale.

He thinks: _Beautiful._

Even he is beautiful. Even he is alive.

She smiles. He winks.

But then it's dry and there's a wind so sharp, he can't hold on to anything. She's still smiling, but her face is cracked, and her lips are bleeding, oozing like the drying skin of a dead corpse.

* * *

He wakes up with a shuddering start, and she's still curled by his side, her hands clutching his hair like it's the only thing keeping her on the edge of the world. He _wishes_ so damn hard that he was the only thing keeping her in this world. This cacophony of shadows, of sin, of bullets and bloodshed. But it's nothing. She's hanging on with the lovely puddles in her dreams. The beautiful splendor in his.

(Yet, she hears a gun and she smiles darkly…)

The moment had been beautiful.

'_But those seconds only last so long…'_

* * *

They lay there sleeping and kissing, not eating a thing.

She twists her neck into the crook of his arms.

"Mmm…I'm too tired…"

He smiles sleepily, draws her closer, "Too tired to hate you…"

"Yeah…for once, Reno…you've got it right."

'_I couldn't never really hate you…'_

'_I can't hate the thing keeping me alive…'_

They sleep again, thoughts drifting off.

She'll kill him someday.

And he can't wait 'till the day that she does.

_

* * *

__I thought that I should be with you,_

_But it ends with a bullet in my head,_

_The world ends with the last whisper of my heart, _

_And the shadows seeing you dead…_

_The world ends with us._

_

* * *

__A/N:_

_Wow, talk about delays for real… Sheesh. This is ridiculous. (I'm such a slacker) but you know that thing that happens, when your inspiration just…moves on to something else, and you've gotta wait until it comes back?_

_Yeah, exactly. _

_Anyway, enjoy._

_TMoh_


	4. Lunacy

_**The Thunder of Guns, So Sweet In My Head**_

* * *

**Part Four: Lunacy is a fool in love.**

* * *

_Absurdity; it hurts so goddamn much,_

_Never want it to stop,_

_But somehow always does,_

_The subway, it goes nowhere,_

_At the end of a barrel,_

_The passengers laugh inside my head…_

_She skews her way past the braids of days,_

_And suddenly, the gun under our pillow is her friend…._

**

* * *

**

**I'd killed this kid…when we met…hours earlier before I'd found her in a bar.**

**I remember it was the end of the first year of his life. **

**The little boy, staring at me with wide eyes…**

**I told the others that I regretted covering his eyes before I let loose, but deep inside, I was glad that I could spare one less sight of insanity before his crib was repainted…**

**I'd like to say, I wasn't always this crazy, this insane. But, if I said that, well, they'd all think I was even more loco for thinking that. **

**That's how she'd say it. **_**'Gawd, you're loco, you loon!'**_

**Ah…**

**It's only right….**

**Only right to keep the thing lighting up the world…**

**Gotta keep her…**

**Gonna keep her until she smiles like I used to…**

**Whenever that will be…**The morning light of New Midgar or '_Edge_' is dim with the exhaustive breath of early hour workers and the hunger of a thousand children. The apartment buildings are slick and gritty with the after layer of grimy rain, dogs wander under crooked trees, and the few flowers that bloom in children's parks are small and painfully withered, slumping limply to the ground.

* * *

She breathes in the fresh acid morning air, filtered with the muck of his skin, and refuses to admit that the world isn't singing. He lies still, sleeping but wakening to her lips; tense and resolute against his chest.

Her eyes sag with the truth of death, arms tilted limply around d his shoulders, barely hanging on.

He grunts, shifting so that his hand butterflies across her bare waist. She can barely stop from flinching, so she buries her face into the crook of his neck, smelling the grease and the oil staining his hair.

Trying to smile, he presses a kiss into the back of her head.

"Mornin' sugar…"

She groans into his hair. "Mwoomphin…"

The air is quiet, humming with the barest trace of laughter and dust.

The rest is just duty. The rest, she would like to think, is death.

And then, that other two percent is just her, and him, lying in the afterhours of exhaustion, content yet melancholy, thinking about who to visit in the cemetery first. They think about what to eat, pancakes, or the sticky container of jam somewhere in the back of the refrigerator, yet to be thrown away.

He thinks, that maybe he loves her. She thinks that maybe he wants her to die.

They both think they are wrong.

So, they stay in bed, and she removes her head from his neck, instead pressing a slightly embarrassed kiss to the whorl of his palm.

'_It's been a while…'_ he thinks, quietly turning around to embrace her. She laughs, almost quirky. Almost the 'her' that was. Just barely. _Almost…_

'_It's been a while…since I've wanted to be alive…'_ she thinks somberly, face still nudging one of his hands into the roots of her hair, his other fingers tickling the sensitive peach fuzz skin on her back.

They both let themselves lose a small crooked smile, chuckling quietly.

"I'm happy…" she whispers.

"I'm alive," he croons repeatedly, kissing the shallow dip of her collarbone, and pulling her mouth to his.

"I'm alive…so fucking _alive_."

They relish in the moment when there isn't death. Painful memories rush; bed sheets fall to the ground, crumpled like old newspapers.

For a moment, they are themselves. They are _happiness._

They know it won't last for long.

_It never does…_

_----X----_

The kitchen is cleaner than the nights before. All glass and old food swept up in a flurry of last minute energy. The stove rattles with the barely cheerful, almost dull clatter of frying pans and spatula's, and she sports a yellow freckled apron, lips forced into a paper thin smile. Night is the worst.

He always comes home late, and they fool themselves into a state of paradise after a fight.

The dish left to simmer; she sits wearily in a wooden chair he's been promising to fix for months, but she doesn't think she ever told him about it at all.

Not like he'd notice.

"Not like he'd care", she tells herself softly, eyes flickering to the different pictures hanging on the wall. Several frames are cracked, several are stained.

Everything is like that. Every minute is fractured. Every day is blemished with lies and the brief fripperies of love.

She slumps against the back of the chair, closes her eyes. The dish starts to burn.

Burying her face into the hem of her shirt, she mumbles.

"I am a _fool_…."

And the chair breaks even more.

---X---

He's somewhat aware that he's two hours late. She's probably leaning in that broken chair that he refuses to fix, and something is burning most likely.

He knows that he is somewhat aware that he is leaving her alone to cry, but it's just so goddamn hard to break away from the tawny liquor in front of him, when he knows that she's slowly disappearing.

He shakes his hand, slaps a bill onto the scratched surface of the counter. Slurs to the barkeep, hand clutched to the rusty tinted stain on the lower left of his shirt.

"One more…please?"

"You payin'?"

He grins a crooked Cheshire grin, reminiscent of the old days, before he cracks out a weary chuckle. "You chargin'?"

The barkeeps chest rumbles, amused.

He slaps down a Bloody Mary. "One's on me. Just go back to her, y'hear? Never know when it's gonna be too late…"

He fingers a strand of his hair, remembering the way she'd clutched to it, earlier that morning. He takes a bitter sip.

"Why am I such a fool?"

The barkeeper frowns, looks out the window. "Because you haven't gone back to 'er…"

"She's expecting me…" he mumbles between sips, suddenly sitting up with a noisy clatter.

The barkeeper frowns as he strides out the door, leaving his wallet on the table. He continues staring out the window as the fool disappears in the yellow dusk.

"_We are all fools in love…" _

* * *

_ She's spared me like a nickel, _

_I remember, like a bullet for my time,_

_Making love on shattered glass,_

_It's unreal how the world begs to die,_

_Moist skin and tattered shirts, _

_Damn, it starts to rain…_

_She can't pull the trigger, decision hampered…_

_I wish she'd try again…_

* * *

_A/N_

_I think, it's like every once in a while I'll update. I'm just so annoyingly sporadic, I even irritate myself. I'll be reading all these great new stories, and then I'll think, 'well, why in hell haven't I updated?'_

_It just takes time I suppose…._

_This part is a bit lighter than the rest, mostly because… Yeah, you have to have all kinds of things in a story to make it a story. _

_Anyway, until I pop in unexpected, _

_TMoh_


End file.
